Madam, - Now that "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to the US vice-president, has been found guilty of lying, perjury, and obstructing justice, the ominous rumble of the tumbril must be drawing ever closer to the Oval Office. Sooner or later the wheels of justice must catch up with Bush, Cheney and their coterie of neo-con collaborators.
These power-hungry warmongers by their perverted "pre-emptive" and illegal invasion of Iraq four years ago, are undoubtedly guilty of the murder and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and the utter devastation of a once prosperous country. Moreover, it was a land in which fundamentalist sectarianism was kept in check, but look at it now - a charnel house of hatred, vicious sectarianism and civil war.
That this would be the inevitable outcome of such an unprincipled imperial adventure was obvious to anyone with a knowledge of history and a modicum of intelligence. Which does not say much for Bush, Cheney, Tony Blair, John Howard of Australia, and the other misguided members of the "coalition of the willing" who, in their crazed megalomania and lust for power, chose to ignore the voices of reason and common sense. It is to be earnestly hoped that bigger fish than Libby will fry for their misdeeds.
It is sad that Ireland is complicit in this horrendous calamity, and cravenly continues to allow use of Shannon airport to US troops and CIA agents. Again I call upon Messrs Ahern and Ahern to dissociate themselves from discredited warmongers, and get onside with the vast majority of the American people who are opposed to Bush and his foreign policy, by closing our airports to US military and CIA flights, even at this eleventh hour. This may be the hour when pragmatism coincides with principle. - Yours, etc,
GEAROID KILGALLEN,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.